The Idea in Question:

What has been the economic impact of large music tours after the pandemic? This idea has largely been inspired by many articles relating to the noted GDP and local spending increase allegedly generated by Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. Some example articles can be seen below.

Taylor Swift being the largest pop star in the world notwithstanding, the success of the Eras Tour on a local economic level raises some questions. The most important one, in my mind, being whether or not this is an isolated phenomenon. Do other massive music tours have a similar positive effect on the economies they visit?

The Scale of the Question

Concert tours, especially with the largest acts in the world, are inevitably massive in scale. The Eras Tour, the highest grossing tour of all time, even adjusting for inflation, played 149 shows. The second highest grossing, Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World tour, played 223. All tours large enough to make an economic impact are massive in most ways. Thus, the ways in which this specific project can measure large tours must be scaled down.

The Tours

Beyond just the artists specifically, which tours to even cover also comes down to time. What time period should be noted as particularly notable. If you look at the highest grossing tours of all time, a large amount of them happened between 2020 and 2025. Closer to 2022 to 2025 but I’m going to expand to that initial six year gap for simplicity’s sake. Tours that both started and ended in that time frame, and specifically the tours on the list of the highest grossing of all time. The specific list of tours that qualifies is below.

  1. Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour
  2. The Weeknd’s After Hours til Dawn tour
  3. Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres WOrld Tour
  4. Ed Sheeran’s Mathematics Tour (Officially called the +−=÷× Tour)
  5. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s 2023-2025 Tour
  6. Metallica’s M72 Tour
  7. P!NK’s Summer Carnival Tour
  8. Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour
  9. Harry Styles’ Love on Tour

The Cities

In part because of the absurd amount of people that exist generally, and amount of large cities across the world, the focus of this project must scale down to accommodate. Therefore, I will only focus on a handful of large cities in the United States. Each city has its own set of large venues that will be accounted for on their respective tour when necessary. Until that bridge is crossed however, the list of cities/metro areas is listed below.

  • Boston
  • New York City
  • Philadelphia
  • Chicago
  • Los Angeles

Sourcing Data